Description:
Explores the rhetorical strategies used by African American residents of Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and St. Paul in the 1950s and 1960s as they attempted to protect their communities against federal, state, and local urban planning.
Brief description: Derek G. Handley is Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is also affiliated faculty in the African Diaspora Studies Department and in the Urban Studies program.
Review Quotes:
"Not only does Derek Handley present a compelling account--sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hopeful--of local communities fighting for their survival against forces of racial and economic inequality and control, he provides fresh perspectives on key concepts like publicity and citizenship that warrant serious scholarly reflection. This book is a must read for anyone hoping to understand historical and contemporary challenges to and opportunities for enacting vibrant, democratic public worlds."
--Robert Asen, author of School Choice and the Betrayal of Democracy: How Market-Based Education Reform Fails Our Communities